Thursday, 11 April 2013

The Year of Less - Less Food

How little is less?

This was my cupboard last night, this morning I am slowly but surely working my way through the shelves, looking carefully at each and every item in there.

In this Year of Less we want to re-jig our diets, relying less and less on pre-prepared, packaged foods and cooking from scratch, so it's important for me to go through our cupboards which yes, are ridiculously full, and keep only the foods that fit in with this way of eating. Obviously we are not throwing food away willy nilly, those foods that we have decided not to eat will be sold on our next car boot sale, only foods that actually need throwing away will be thrown away (and no I don't stick religiously to 'best before' dates I use my commonsense, my eyes and nose to determine what foods are safe to eat). The money made from selling off any foodstuffs will be added to our £2 Housekeeping tin to make this last longer.

This was how it looked when I had emptied just the lower shelf, somehow it looked even more spread out all over the worktop, and this was after I had thrown away some foods that had gone off (a couple of jars should have been in the fridge after opening....oops). Foods in the bin, jars in the recycling box.

Now I am on for the second shelf and it's contents are all over the worktop, I am Blogging while the shelf dries after a thorough wash. While I'm doing this I'm also sorting foods into types and storing like with like, it will make for a much easier rummage through cupboards while we chomp our way through the contents of them all.

Using most of this food up before we go shopping for similar will make the £2 House Keeping Challenge last even longer, and now I am getting to know exactly what I have in stock I will be able to meal plan that much more effectively, and see the contents of the shelves go down in a very pleasing way.

Yesterday I had a good sort through the larder cupboard ...

..... freeing up lots of space and managing to fill some baskets for the car boot sale with over £20 worth of food and thats a lot of food when I've priced most of it at just 20p each (they are out of date items, so I will have to sell them cheaply).

I am constantly sorting and re-sorting at the moment, since this picture was taken I have already moved the pasta sauces over to the other cupboard to be with the tins of tomato puree and chopped tomatoes, hopefully it will all make sense when I finally finish :-)

Can't beat a good clear out though I suspect that can be the problem with sellers like Approved foods in that a lot of what they sell, falls into this category. We are currently trying to eat from the freezer but can't seem to stop myself baking fresh such as pizza and quiche. Hope to make one for tea and that will be 3 meals worth.

That's it! My pantry is getting the once over this weekend too! I have been staring at its untidyness since Christmas and its time to do it. We seem to open a packet of biscuits or chips then put them back and never go near them again so they go stale! Such a waste.Does dry pasta go off? I have a lot of opened packs of that in there but I guess its still okay. We have way too many oils and vinegars. My canned goods probably need a toss out too. Anything way at the back might be 2-3 years old.My bottom shelves of the pantry will house my jar collection, like yours. At the moment they are stuffed in any drawer or cupboard all over the place.

I can't wait to get home tonight and start the process - it will be a big cleansing for me! Stay tuned...

I de-cluttered & cleaned (it's surprised me how dirty my shelves were lol!) my pantry before we left for holiday. I want to completely overhaul what we're eating when we get home, and will either use up, or give away anything that doesn't fit in with our new diet.

This is my Blog, just me writing about our day to day life on a hillside in North Wales. Along with our dogs, Suky and Mavis, our cat Ginger .... who secretly thinks he's one of the canine gang ... and a roving band of egg laying chickens that live cheek by jowl with the local wildlife.

We grow our own fruit and vegetables, selling surplus plants and edibles at the gate. We sell the eggs the chickens lay, we reuse, recycle and rethink ... and life ticks over at a pace that suits us.

It is simply the wild and wacky ramblings of a 50 something townie turned country girl called Sue, who lost her heart to a sailor and started a new life in the country .... over nine years ago. On a path that took us from Cumbria to Oxfordshire, to Berkshire and then we found our home at the bottom of a wet and windy Welsh hillside by a busy main road.

Pull up a chair, grab a coffee and relax into a world of dogs, cats, chickens, the occasional grass munching sheep ... and some pretty delicious vegan foods ... oh did I mention that I don't actually eat the eggs!!

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Our New Life in the Country is my blog.

I use it to chart the day by day, week by week, year by year goings on in mine and Lovely Hubby's life. In it I also express my views and opinions, and say what I do andoccasionally how I do it. I am hoping that this will prove to be a useful reminder for myself of how we did things, as we continue in our learning process.

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